The public got its first look at plans Thursday for the proposed $350 million Kalahari Resorts complex in Tobyhanna Township, which will feature the biggest indoor water park in North America.

Kalahari officials presented the township's planning commission with its preliminary land development plan, which they hope to have approved in time to break ground in April for a late 2014 opening.

The proposed resort will be located off Interstate 380 and include land that is now the West Course of Pocono Manor's two golf courses.

The indoor water park, which would abut Interstate 380's northbound lanes at full build-out, will be built on the course's seventh hole.

A convention center and hotel would be built near the location of the sixth hole of the course.

The commission took no action Thursday.

The plan first must get a recommendation from the planning commission and then will move on to the township's board of supervisors for approval.

Commission Chairman Mark Sincavage said it isn't known how many meetings would be needed before the commission can make a recommendation.

The township's engineer, Robert McHale, is examining the plans and putting together a list of comments that would need to be addressed before any recommendation is made.

Project and township officials expect the comments to be complete next week.

Thursday's meeting was a chance for the project's engineers, Pennoni Associates, to update the commission and other township officials.

Kalahari plans to build the 150-acre resort complex in three phases, according to Joseph Mullen of Pennoni.

The first phase, to be completed in late 2014 or early 2015, would include 450 hotel rooms, a 100,000-square-foot indoor water park, a 2-acre outdoor water park, 65,000 square feet of convention center space and a 30,000-square-foot indoor theme park and arcade.

Subsequent phases would bring the hotel rooms to about 1,200, the outdoor water park to 15 acres and the indoor water park to 300,000 square feet.

Construction will bring about 1,200 jobs to the area, then another 700 full- and part-time jobs created during the construction and the initial year of operation, according to the Hotel and Leisure Advisors economic impact study.

In addition to the jobs, Kalahari visitors are projected to spend about $18 million annually in the Poconos, according to the study.

The project heard its first bit of public criticism from the Brodhead Watershed Association on Thursday.

Theresa Merli, the group's executive director, said the association has met with Kalahari officials a "couple of times" to discuss the site plans.

She said there is concern that Kalahari's wastewater discharge plans — to use Pocono Township's under-construction sewer system and deposit the wastewater more than 20 miles away — could "circumvent the natural systems" and possibly disturb the water quality of the nearby streams.

She said she hopes the "diminishment would be minimized" during the planning process.